Posted on 01/22/2015 8:40:09 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Unusual, not because it’s rare to see an American journalist bowing to Islamic sensibilities on depictions of Mohammed but because typically they don’t go so far as to demand legal limits on their own profession. When the New York Times refuses to run a cartoon goofing on Islam, they don’t want the reason to be government censorship. They prefer to be censored by more sympathetic agents, like violent Muslim radicals.
To be precise here, though, DeWayne Wickham, the dean of Morgan State’s J-school, isn’t demanding a “Mohammed exception” to the First Amendment. He’s demanding an exception for all speech that would make the audience so angry that they might react violently — exactly the sort of slippery slope on censorship that people like you and me worry about when images of Mohammed are suppressed. Actual line from this op-ed, regarding the new cover of Charlie Hebdo: “The once little-known French satirical news weekly crossed the line that separates free speech from toxic talk.”
The most current issue of Charlie Hebdo again has Mohammed on its cover. This time, he appears crying under a headline that reads: “All is forgiven.” Well, apparently not. Ten people have been killed during protests in Niger, a former French colony. Other anti-French riots have erupted from North Africa to Asia. In reaction to all of this, Pope Francis has said of the magazine, “You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”…
In 1919, the Supreme Court ruled speech that presents a “clear and present danger” is not protected by the First Amendment. Crying “fire” in a quiet, uninhabited place is one thing, the court said. But “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.”
Twenty-two years later, the Supreme Court ruled that forms of expression that “inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace” are fighting words that are not protected by the First Amendment.
If Charlie Hebdo’s irreverent portrayal of Mohammed before the Jan. 7 attack wasn’t thought to constitute fighting words, or a clear and present danger, there should be no doubt now that the newspaper’s continued mocking of the Islamic prophet incites violence. And it pushes Charlie Hebdo’s free speech claim beyond the limits of the endurable.
Amazingly for a J-school prof, none of that is right. The Supreme Court hasn’t used the “clear and present danger” test for First Amendment cases in decades. The test now for inflammatory speech is the Brandenburg test, a strciter standard that allows the state to criminalize incitement only in narrow circumstances — when the speaker intends to incite violence and violence is likely to quickly result. Charlie Hebdo’s Mohammed cartoons may have met the “likely” prong of that test but they sure didn’t meet the “intent” part. The “fighting words” doctrine is still good law but it too has been gradually narrowed over time. Today, for the moment, it’s limited to “direct personal insults” between people who are face to face. That’s the key difference between publishing an offensive cartoon and, to borrow the Pope’s recent analogy, stepping up to a man and insulting his mother. From the Supreme Court’s perspective, those situations are apples and oranges. I appreciate Wickham’s candor in trying to expand “fighting words” to allow censorship of all kinds of offensive speech, though; I’ve worried about that myself, as longtime HA readers know. If speech can be criminalized because it angers a man to the point where he wants to attack you, why should we limit it to speech said in his presence? “Fighting words” is a potential trojan horse for smuggling all sorts of exceptions for “hate” into the First Amendment. I’m surprised more lefties aren’t as forthright as this guy is in making the case for it.
Someone should poll the media on whether they agree with Wickham’s “heckler’s veto” assumption that it’s Charlie Hebdo’s staff, rather than, say, the jihadis like Al Qaeda who put a bounty on them and ended up murdering them, that’s guilty of “incitement.” I’d be curious to see the numbers.
Neither can I.
It’s getting to where my only comment these days is “What a leftist dumbass”.
A small nitpick-they stopped being “liberals” in any sense decades ago. They are now leftists, or as they call themselves, “progressives”. Leftists is more accurate.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Sorry Prof. but there is no mention of Mohammed or Islam or even ARabs.
Those who insult other faiths but treat Islam with a special exception think they are being bold and edgy. The truth is they're cowards and it's a simple as that.
So yes, Piss Christ and Mary Dung is ok because those that call that art will live another day.
28 Pages/Saudi Role Remains in Media Spotlight: Terry Strada on CNN
The media spotlight continues on the role of Saudi Arabia in terrorism, and the necessity to de-classify the “28 pages” of the Joint Congressional Inquiry report on 9/11. Among the developments in the last two days, are that CNN International interviewed Terry Strada on January 19th, national co-chair of the 9/11 Families and Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism, who spoke at the Jan. 7 Washington, D.C., press conference with Congressmen demanding declassification. January 19th, Commentary magazine posted an article, “Every Presidential Candidate Should Pledge Release of Missing 9/11 Pages.”
Amidst this ongoing attention, an instance of arrogant evasion took place today, by Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA (2006-2009) and NSA (1999-2005). Hayden was speaking on Capitol Hill at a Middle East Policy Council event, where he was asked about the withheld 28 pages and the Saudi role in terrorism, by EIR’s Bill Jones. Hayden sneered in reply, that he was going to give an “unsatisfactory answer.” Namely, Hayden said that he hadn’t read the 28 pages; didn’t know what was in them; and didn’t intend to; and wouldn’t say more.
This is the immorality Terry Strada denounced roundly on CNN International. She said, “Yes, Saudi Arabia funds terrorism.” She said that, besides releasing the 28 pages, we want legal action against those responsible.
“The world has a right to know the role of Saudi Arabia in funding terrorism....”
She called on everyone to activate.
In the Commentary article, writer Michael Rubin ended his piece,
“Journalists should not let any candidate off the hook. Every aspirant to the presidency should pledge him- or herself to full transparency and to complete the historical reckoning from 9/11 that all the victims, their families, and, indeed, every American deserves.”
Rubin, who is at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute, makes the point that “Obama is no different than his predecessor,” and not only on the 9/11 cover-up. Rubin wrote, “When Navy SEALS raided bin Laden’s compound, they removed millions of files...” but they have released only 17 documents.
Sen. Bill Nelson Calls Saudis ‘Duplicitous’ and ‘Two-Faced’
For the second time in as many days, a sitting Senator has singled out Saudi perfidy on the terrorist question. Contacted Jan. 16 for his response to former Sen. Bob Graham’s call to release the 28 pages, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) told the Florida Politics blog, although he had not read them, he did not need to in order to affirm that the Saudis are “quite duplicitous” regarding the terror threat in their own country. With this, Nelson joins Senators Richard Burr (R-NC) and Chris Murphy (D-CT)—who spoke out on CNN’s “State of the Union” January 18th—in the assault on the House of Saud. Nelson said:
“They will say one thing in private, which they desperately want us to do this or that against the bad guys, but because of their politics and their position in the Middle East among their Arab colleagues, they’re afraid to say those things.”
While this problem is widely encountered when dealing with foreign governments, Nelson said, the Saudis are notorious for playing a “two-faced game” on this account.
“Because they allowed, back in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, the incubation and hatching of these radical terrorists [sic] groups that were often started in Saudi Arabia, and/or funded by Saudi money. It may not be government money, but it was Saudi citizen money, and as a result, they’re rueing the day now, because Saudi Arabia is one of the prime targets of the terrorists all over the world wherever there is a Saudi interest.”
Additionally, the article names Walter Jones’ and Stephen Lynch’s H.Res.14, the legislation for the full release of the redacted 28 pages of the joint inquiry into 9/11
Marine Le Pen Hits Saudis and Qatar as Terrorist Funders
Marine Le Pen, head of the right-wing Front National, which a recent poll showed to be the leading party in France, with support from about one-third of the population, due primarily for its anti-euro stand, published an op-ed in the New York Times on January 18 directly attacking Saudi Arabia and Qatar for their funding and support for jihadist terrorists. Le Pen wrote:
“French foreign policy has wandered between Scylla and Charybdis in the last few years. Former President Nicolas Sarkozy’s intervention in Libya [which turned the country over to terrorist gangs—ed.], President François Hollande’s support for some Syrian fundamentalists, alliances formed with rentier states that finance jihadist fighters, like Qatar and Saudi Arabia—all are mistakes that have plunged France into serious geopolitical incoherence from which it is struggling to extricate itself.
“Incidentally...Gerd Müller, Germany’s federal minister of economic cooperation and development, deserves praise for having the clear-sightedness, like the Front National, of accusing Qatar of supporting jihadists in Iraq.”
More Discussion of Saudi Funded Terrorism
The role of Saudi Arabia in promoting and financing terrorism is continuing to seep out in the major news media. A few examples:
• On CNN’s “State of the Union” show on Sunday, there was discussion of the role of Saudi funding of the Wahhabi groups that produce jihadists, and of both Saudi Arabia’s and Pakistan’s repressive practices. Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) said the Obama Administration should be telling the Saudis and Pakistanis that this funding of terrorists has to stop, or else there will be some ramifications. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) agreed, saying:
“And, of course, we know that, for years, for decades, the Saudis have been funneling money to Wahhabi clerical organizations that fund the very madrasas that train Islamic jihadists. We certainly know in Pakistan that, at the same time that they have been fighting radical elements, they have also been funding those radical elements, or at least being permissive of them.”
• The Globe & Mail of Canada runs a piece by its national affairs columnist Jeffrey Simpson, entitled, “Cozying Up to Saudi Arabia: How Can That be Principled?” in which Simpson blasts the Harper government for its arms deals and political ties to Saudi Arabia —
“whose government-sponsored support for a Wahhabi/Salafist form of Islam has spawned terrorism in many places;... whose government oppresses its Shia minorities; and whose government has beheaded more people in 2014 than any other in the world and sentences a blogger to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for insulting Islam.”
Simpson says that Saudi Arabia, more than any other country, “has been responsible for financing schools and teaching that promote the Saudis’ Wahhabi version of Islam, which in turn has provided a fertile breeding ground for extremism and terrorism.”
• The issue of Saudi funding of terrorism was also discussed on BBC’s “Hardtalk” program on Jan. 16, in an interview with former MI-6 counter-terrorism official Richard Barrett. Barrett pointed out that we can never kill all the terrorists, nor solve the problem with more surveillance laws. When asked about the large amounts of funds and weapons being provided to terrorists from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, he said that in his years of investigating Al Qaeda, he had never found evidence of a state directly supporting terrorism, but there are certainly individuals within Saudi Arabia etc. who are supporting terrorists, and he said that Western governments should lean heavily on states like Saudi Arabia to get them to crack down on terrorist financing.
You can only insult Catholics by sticking a crucifix in a jar of urine (they’re OK with that) or the Virgin Mary by covering her photo with elephant dung. (also OK to them)
To be clear Charlie Hebdo’s mocking cartoons only incites a small minority of a minority to violence.
To follow this professor’s line of thought to its logical conclusion; because they are easily incited to violence, Islamic fundamentalist are the people of the world that will decide what is prohibited under “Free Speech”.
What this professor is therefore proposing is instituting Muslim heresy law as the standard for prohibited speech.
To draw an analogy; the line of thought the professor puts forth is to take the free world back to the equivalent of Middle Ages Europe when it was under the Holy Roman Empire. A time when we lived under two different jurisprudence systems. That of the King and that of the Church. And you faced death under both systems. And heresy could be punished by flogging, having your tongue cut out or death (usually burning at the stake).
I prefer to remain free. Restrict immigration from Muslim countries severely and deport any Muslim that expresses even the least tendency to fundamentalism.
Islam is incompatible with freedom. It is self-evident.
al-lah is satan and mohammed was his spawn
You forgot fat people and Southerners.
*censored frustrated grumbling that sounds like an ancient Sumerian summoning ritual*
I did, didn’t I?
I read Dewayne’s editorial in USA Today. I always knew he was nuts. All he talks about is race anyway.
The slippery slope here is that this kind of thinking legitimizes a violent reaction to anything and takes the onus of control from the slinger of rocks and places it squarely on the slinger of words. If you can raise enough people to violently react to anything someone might say ... such as “Obama sucks” then suddenly it is not the attacker who is at fault but instead the speaker who has caused the disturbance.
In my humble opinion, if your religious faith is so weak as to be shaken by a cartoon or caricature or even a soaking in urine . . . then how strong is your faith?
That is NOT to say that we can’t express our displeasure with such depictions ... just that we can’t do so violently!
Sadly our politically correct judicial and executive branches of government are leading the way in the destruction of the First Amendment and our Constitutional protections.
Then the USA is not where this clown needs to reside...he obviously does not comprehend what freedoms are.
Sounds like he’s a proponent for sharia and should go teach in a madrassa...
That's because Jesus is God. The creator of the universe can handle insults.
On the other hand, Satan, the being worshiped by mohammadans cannot stand being mocked.
So if you cannot persuade by logic or reason adopt a violent attitude to further your beliefs or stifle those who hold opposing views.
Does going to Journalism school have the same effect as habitually smoking pot, it dramatically lowers your IQ ?
Had ENOUGH Yet ?
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